


Fugitives Together

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [40]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4376702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after Kirkwall, Hawke and Anders come across a reward poster. They have some things to work out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fugitives Together

The reward poster with their likenesses wasn’t very good. Hawke would wager that the artist had never laid eyes on either him or Anders—funny, since sometimes it seemed like between the two of them, half of Kirkwall knew them well enough to come by asking for favors. But though the resemblance was poor, the poster got enough right to be dangerous.

“I should cut my hair,” Anders said as he untied it, sitting on the edge of the bed in their rented room.

Hawke pulled a face. He loved Anders’ hair. He loved the way it looked hanging down around his face in the mornings, and when a few strands had fallen loose after a fight. He loved watching the movement of Anders’ hands as he tied it back, and the feel of it between his fingers. “I don’t know. Who knows how many people even saw that poster?”

“It’s just hair, love. I’ll live,” Anders said. “You too—you could let yours grow, maybe.”

Hawke considered it, running a hand through his hair to judge how long it had gotten in the last few weeks on the road. Leave it much longer, and he could probably start tying it back. Not exactly the image of a noble Champion. “I’ve gotten pretty scruffy, huh?”

Anders smiled fondly. “Scruffy suits you.”

“Glad you approve.” But Anders’ eyes had gone distant, that distracted look he always got when he was lost in thought. Hawke ducked a little to try to catch his gaze again. “Something wrong?”

Anders shook his head. “I’ve really done a number on you, haven’t I?”

“I didn’t realize I looked _that_ bad.”

This got him a quick, halfhearted smile, but it didn’t last. “Seeing your picture on that poster along with mine—I wasn’t expecting that. I suppose I still thought that if you ever decided to leave—”

“Maker, not this again—”

“ _If_ you decided to leave,” Anders continued, not allowing Hawke to interrupt him, “you could still go back to a normal life. But there’s no chance of that now, is there? I’ve dragged you down with me.”

“There was never a chance of me leaving, so it’s a moot point, really,” Hawke said mildly.

He was more surprised they hadn’t seen a reward poster before now. But they’d been lucky so far—they hadn’t seen any signs of pursuit since crossing into Nevarra. Since then, they’d kept away from villages where a pair of strangers would stick out, making their way overland to Cumberland and its College of Magi without incident.

A big port city like Cumberland was safer in a lot of ways, with plenty of inns along the docks where people didn’t look twice at another pair of haggard travelers passing through. But more people also meant more templars.

“I’m serious, love. You’re paying for my actions. I wish I could shield you from that.” Anders was looking away, down at his hands. “The decision was mine. Whatever consequences there are, they should fall on me.”

“You sound like Merrill.”

That got him to look up. “What? No, I don’t.”

“You absolutely do. Risking your life and pretending you’re the only one affected by it, as if the people who care about you aren’t involved at all.” That came out more bitter than he’d intended, but Anders could stand to hear a little bitterness. Hawke sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. “You used to shout at her for that, and now listen to you.”

“No,” Anders said. “No, I never forgot about how this would hurt you. I tried to warn you. I tried to keep you out of it—”

“Doesn’t work that way. You’re a part of my life, and we both knew what we were getting into when we started this thing between us. At least, I did. Not so sure about you, sometimes.”

With a short, incredulous laugh, Anders gestured vaguely around the room, as if to take in their entire fugitive status. “I don’t think you were expecting all _this_ , love.”

“Maybe not, but I wasn’t exactly expecting to spend our lives raising kittens in Hightown, either. And I’m not new to the fugitive apostate life—”

“But not like this. What I did—they’re never going to stop hunting me.”

“ _Us_. They’re never going to stop hunting _us_. Did you really think I’d leave you after all this, even if my face wasn’t on that poster? Just who do you think I am?”

Anders stared at him, as if trying to figure out what he was asking. “A better man than I deserve,” he said at last.

Hawke sighed. _Damn you, Anders._

For a moment they sat in silence, not looking at each other, each lost in their own thoughts. The sounds of the docks, of people passing by on the street outside, filtered through the thin walls of their rented room. Finally Hawke spoke. “I’ve told you about how I met Aveline.”

Anders tilted his head to look at him. “When you escaped Lothering?”

“When I killed her husband.”

Wesley had been the first person he’d ever killed. He sometimes felt like that had set something in motion, set the pattern for his time in Kirkwall. He’d been trying to help—he _had_ helped. It had been necessary. But he wasn’t sure Aveline had ever really forgiven him for it. And ever since then, it seemed like there was always someone else who needed help, and he always wound up with blood on his hands. And every one of the deaths since then had seemed necessary, for one reason or another.

There’d been a gang who’d attacked him once, a group calling themselves the Dog Lords, a bunch of Fereldan refugees. If his life had gone a little differently, if he hadn’t had his mother’s family name and his uncle’s connections with Athenril, he could easily have been one of them. He’d thought of them once when Anders had been distraught over what happened with Ella and Alrik, when Varric had tried to cheer him up by rattling off the number of people they’d each killed over the years. The count had been in the triple digits.

“I had no right to make that call for her. But you don’t hand someone a knife and tell them to pass judgment on their own husband.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he remembered Karl, wished he could unsay it. He should never have let Anders be put in that position, either.

Anders’ mouth twisted. “Are you saying you wish someone else had been holding the knife when it was my turn?”

“No! Maker’s balls, Anders.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair, frustrated. “No, I—shit. What I’m trying to say is, you can’t do that to me. I’m _not_ the better man here, and I don’t think you know how much it scares me when you talk like that. I’m definitely not the arbiter of justice in this relationship, all right? Don’t ever put me in that position again.”

“I wish I could promise you that.” The naked pain on Anders’ face—it never ceased to amaze Hawke how Anders could survive with his emotions showing so plainly all the time. “But even with what I did, you have to know there’s a chance it won’t be enough. I don’t know what I’ll—”

“You’ll do whatever you have to do,” Hawke cut him off, “and you still won’t scare me off.” He’d never expected otherwise. Changing the world was rarely done peacefully, and chances were good that their lives would only get more violent from here on out. “Fugitives together, remember? I'm not here to stop you, I'm not being dragged down by you—I'm _with_ you. And that was my choice. Let me take a little responsibility for that. Maker’s breath, Anders, even when I was just distracting the Grand Cleric, I didn’t exactly think you were throwing her a surprise party.”

Anders snorted, smiling a little despite himself. “Take a little responsibility? Love, for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve acted like half the problems in Thedas are your personal responsibility.”

He couldn’t really deny that. “Fair enough. So you can see how it’d throw me off when you try to take that away from me. When you start talking about how you’ve dragged me into this, or warning me away—I’m worried one day I’ll wake up and find you’ve run off without me.”

Anders’ expression softened. “Too late for that, I think,” he said. Sighing, he leaned against Hawke’s shoulder and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. You can’t know what it means to me, having you here. It's still hard to believe you stayed with me.”

Hawke raised his hand to run his fingers through Anders’ hair, thinking of the times Anders had said similar things, back in Kirkwall. But for all Hawke had tried to do to support him then, Anders still took on so much on his own—late nights working on the manifesto long after Hawke had gone to sleep, later nights on mage underground business that Hawke couldn’t be told of, even as the mage underground had crumbled around him. Those last few weeks before the explosion had driven that home. And he understood why Anders had tried to shield him from it all then—but that ship had sailed.

“This is new to me—being on the run _with_ someone, not just _from_ someone,” Anders said. “Give me some time to figure it out.”

“Pretty sure that’s something we’re going to have to figure out together,” Hawke said. “But we’ve got time. I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
